Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

We've seen possibly more than our fair share of shoddy, loveless
ports on the Xbox over the past year, and we can't help but finger
some of the big name publishers for their attitude towards the new
formats. The basic premise over the last 18 months seems to be to
design everything for the PS2 and then if it's a hit, bung it out
as "cost effectively" as possible on the Xbox and GameCube, and
presto, a whole new sku to service the cash rich early adopter.

Except the early adopters have gotten wise to these evil ways, and
for the most part, every single one of these ill conceived
conversions has failed miserably - mainly because software designed
for its native system is almost always vastly superior. Thus, when
greeted with Jedi Outcast we were slightly optimistic
because of its PC origins. Surely porting a PC first person
shooter, based on the now ageing Quake 3 engine makes a lot of
sense? The Xbox, obviously, employs a similar architecture, and
gives console gamers hassle free fragging, complete with
split-screen multi-player action. Perfect.

Kyle's a master locksmith

Except for the fact that
Jedi Outcast was never perfect in the first place. The game is set
"several years" after Kyle Katarn avenged his father's death and
saved the Valley of the Jedi from Jerec and his band of Dark Jedi,
and Kyle must cryptically "reclaim his past in order to save his
future" - or in other words shoot a lot of Storm Troopers
and assorted dark side scum, while meticulously winding his way
through nine gameplay areas, unlocking every door in sight.

Gestalt's
original
review of the PC version back in April last year scored the
game at 7/10, and observed that the game suffers from a low key
beginning. He was certainly right about that, and it's probably
enough to put even the most enthusiastic FPS veteran off. For fully
six hours (depending on how good you are, and making allowances for
the fact that playing with a joypad is inherently more difficult
than a keyboard and mouse) you'll be wading through the FPS
equivalent of sludge.

Level after level of tedious switch and/or key hunting, execrable
jump puzzles, uninspired weaponry, botched AI, compounded by an
engine that next to the now ageing Halo looks years behind, and
certainly not a good advert for the Xbox. If you like your games to
stagger along pushing out bland, low textured environments then
Jedi Outcast is the one for you. Even forgiving its uninspired
visuals, the regular hard disk pause while more data is spooled off
the system is plain unforgivable. Regularly you'll fire off a shot;
the game will pause for an instant before the sound effect
eventually reminds you you're in a battle. Fortunately most of the
AI issues mentioned last year appear to have been corrected,
although we still managed to witness headless chicken Storm
Troopers running in circles and crouching as they inched towards
us. What was Vicarious Visions thinking? Probably about the money,
but the blame must also be levelled at Raven for a patchily
designed experience that could and perhaps should have been the
definitive Star Wars FPS.

Use the Force, Kyle

But despite the ropey, frustrating, quick save laden beginning,
things do pick up once you hook up with Luke Skywalker, and
you're forced to learn your Jedi skills - but the way the game's
structured leading up to this, it'll be a wonder if many gamers
will even be bothered to trudge through this far. Somehow the lure
of pulling off Jedi tricks keeps you staggering on, and eventually
you'll get to switch to a third person viewpoint and pull off some
unintentionally amusing, but highly useful manoeuvres. Top of the
list for pure evil mind tricks is the ability to Force Push your
foes into bottomless pits, as well as Force Speed (temporary sprint
ability, while the world slows down around you), Force Jump, and
Force Grip, which allows Kyle to lift enemies clear off the floor.
Light Saber duels are also a good laugh, and make a pleasant change
from the FPS drudge that leads up to it.

The initial set of weapons hardly helps endear you to Jedi Outcast.
The Stun Baton is next to useless, as is the Bryar Blaster Pistol.
The Wookiee Bowcaster is ok-ish, but you run out of ammo all too
quickly, while the Thermal Detonator is occasionally useful, but
only when the enemy's being exceptionally dim. This leaves the
Blaster Rifle, and it's hardly a pulse raiser. Later on we get the
Flak Cannon-esque Fletchette, the Disruptor Rifle, and the deadly
Imperial Heavy Repeater which are welcome additions if you get deep
into the game, but nothing we haven't seen many times before. If it
wasn't for the enjoyable Light Saber battles and the exceptional
authenticity the music and sound effects lend (in full 5.1 surround
on the Xbox), you'd often be wondering what relevance Jedi Outcast
has to the Star Wars universe at all. So much of the time it comes
across as an FPS by the numbers.

Push everything in sight…it might do something

To make matters worse, the puzzles are often so obscure you'll
be marching off to GameFAQs in disgust - only to find you were
doing the right thing all along (just maybe not shooting or
pressing the exact right pixel!). Even at the earliest stages of
the game you'll be expected to keep a look out for obscure vents or
push an arbitrary switch that is entirely flanked and camouflaged
by similar looking consoles. It's never exactly taxing, but the
scenery so often blends into itself that it's often a painstaking
process of clicking on everything in the vague hope that it
activates something. You rarely know why you're pushing
switches everywhere, but hey, they're there so we may as well keep
stabbing away until something happens. Zzzzzzzz.

Which basically leaves the game's six multiplayer modes to shore up
the package. Sadly, most are subtle variations on deathmatch: Free
For All is straight deathmatch with all weapons and all force
powers, Holocron Free For All is deathmatch except you start with
no force powers, Team Free For All does what it says on the tin,
Capture The Flag is Capture The Flag, which only leaves two
slightly interesting variations: Jedi Master, which gives the
player a single Light Saber on the map which you have to race for,
with no player able to score points until someone has picked it up.
Once a player has the Light Saber they can only use this as a
weapon, but gets level 3 Force powers. Oooh. Finally, Duel allows
only two players to fight at once, with a winner stays on approach,
with the loser going to the back of the queue. Up to 16 players can
compete on each of the nine maps, but bafflingly only supports
two-player split-screen. We can only assume that four-player
split-screen was too jerky, as two player is pretty rough as it is.
In fact, if you just play with bots and have the whole screen to
yourself, it still chugs unbelievably - especially when there's 14
bots joining you in the mayhem. It's all good fun - until you find
yourself cursing the frame rate. It's plain unacceptable, and the
lack of four-player, LAN or link modes just highlight its
shortcomings even more.

In the final analysis, Jedi Outcast is certainly an entertaining
package when it gets things right, but it's also riddled with
design flaws, technical flaws and various minor irritations that
conspire to detract from your overall enjoyment. Given that it's
also not Live (or even LAN) enabled, Xbox owners don't even have
that crumb of comfort to elevate its status. With news of a sequel
in the works for release next year, let's hope LucasArts can
finally serve up the FPS that fans of the franchise have been
waiting for. Right now, this is the best Star Wars fans can hope
for, but they deserve so much more.